Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said • Hacker News Board

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#731

Post by JPKab » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

estaseuropano wrote: post #269

livinginfear wrote: post #221

I think it's worth noting that among the demographics that frequent this site there is ostensibly a deep distrust and skepticism of the American government on matters of surveillance, and law enforcement. Yet simultaneously there is ostensibly a high degree of trust in the motives and competency of the American government when it comes to COVID. There's been multiple threads lately, including one that is on the front…

As a European I'm quite surprised how deep the conspiracy theories and suspicions against the state go in the US. You don't need tp take everything at face value, but to be so suspicious of essential institutions like the CDC seems crazy to me. Except for a vocal but tiny minority there's a lot of trust in the institutions of the EU and (Western) Europe, where citizrns at most worry about incompetence, not malicious…

As an American, I'm surprised by the LACK of anger and distrust towards the EU by Europeans, specifically in the wake of the vaccine fiasco where the EU was so dramatically behind in procuring and administering vaccines to the population.

But yes, I agree that the skepticism of the Federal government in the US is far too skewed towards assumptions of malevolence, when it really should be skewed towards incompetence.

If you've ever travelled to the US, it's absolutely embarrassing how incompetent and awful of an experience it is to enter the country. Compared to when I go to basically ANY other country, the US customs personnel are rude, unprofessional, and just outright incompetent. It's such a massive difference in experience that you it slaps you in the face, every time.

Instead of a debate limited to how big or small the Federal government in the US should be, we should be having a debate about how efficient it is. We don't, due to the absurd, theatrical polarization we have baked into our system.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#732

Post by unethical_ban » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #359

unethical_ban wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC is not law enforcement. The talent it attracts, its mission statement, its mode of operation are all different. The statements of fact they release pertain to public health with no human adversarial motives. The research they use to substantiate their claims can be peer reviewed, duplicated and critiqued.

"The statements of fact they release pertain to public health with no human adversarial motives." The CDC has knowingly lied about the efficacy of masks intending to trick the public to deprive them of useful medical gear. They were slow to identify the spread of covid as aerosol based, even after it was widely known. CDC guidance focused on "6 feet apart" instead of the importance of ventilation. The CDC temporarily…

I do agree the "avoid a medical shortage" white lie did harm their credibility, but I know why they did it (I think). It will be a good case study for bioethics and public policy students.

I always assumed the virus was airborne, and they tended to say outside was safer than inside. I haven't looked at the new way they're phrasing it, but I need to look more.

The J&J vaccine halt was done for scientific reasons, and precisely to instill confidence in people that the CDC is acting in good faith and isn't going to sling something out there without knowing all they can about its effects. That you think they made the wrong decision is funny if it weren't sad.

Finally, and I don't know you, but I think it's cute how all the CDC haters/people saying Fauci is evil are the ones who through the pandemic have laughed at the virus and said vaccines are evil. Now here we have an instance of someone skeptical of the CDC because they didn't give enough warning about the virus and they eroded trust in vaccines!

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#733

Post by TheCoelacanth » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

Markoff wrote: post #437

I feel like mandating masks (in US) at this point is quite pointless, pretty much everyone who wants to protect themselves can get vaccinated (and they most likely did already), so they don't need to worry about serious symptoms and people who don't wanna get vaccinated are clearly not worried about them so why force any of these groups to wear masks? Scared people are protected, not scared don't want protection and…

I agree, but not until mid-June.

Vaccine appointments weren't widely available for everyone until late April, so for people who got their first shot then , add four weeks until the second shot plus two weeks for the vaccine to be fully effective, many people won't be fully vaccinated until mid-June.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#734

Post by cmckn » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

vcavallo wrote: post #663

cmckn wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ton of Americans think of it as a lesser of two evils; because many (most?) Americans have the luxury of being comfortable. They don’t really think about politics, they don’t really have policy wants/needs. It’s just sensationalism on Facebook and celebrity on Instagram. It’s more about sports-team tribalism than participating in a society. At the risk of sounding morose, I don’t know where we go from here. Everyon…

even if people cared a lot, you think they’d get presidential primary candidates that they want? or a vice president that they want? these things are faze choices.

For what it’s worth, I did have a candidate in the primary that I liked a lot. I think all of my friends did too. They didn’t get elected, but I also did nothing outside of casting the ballot to help get them elected.

(And, part of caring a lot is paying attention to the other 99% of elected positions)

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#735

Post by anoncake » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #598

anoncake wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Against what, a pandemic that's over by then? For more than a year, children's interests have been largely ignored, their well-being and education sacrificed for the sake of scared adults. Now we start vaccinating them, which doesn't actually benefit them but does benefit aforementioned adults, to protect them just in case they catch Covid after the pandemic is over, but not until they're old enough that this is actu…

What makes you think the pandemic is over? New variants are still emerging, and some of them are pretty worrying. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

You didn't even finish reading my first sentence.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#736

Post by throwaway0a5e » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

jmcqk6 wrote: post #693

livinginfear wrote: post #221

I think it's worth noting that among the demographics that frequent this site there is ostensibly a deep distrust and skepticism of the American government on matters of surveillance, and law enforcement. Yet simultaneously there is ostensibly a high degree of trust in the motives and competency of the American government when it comes to COVID. There's been multiple threads lately, including one that is on the front…

To treat the government as a single cohesive entity moving with unified purpose is a fallacy.

I'll take it a step further:

To treat any organization larger than about a few hundred people that way is naive to the point of being stupid.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#737

Post by gdubs » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

My biggest question right now is with my kids who are 7 and under. But also just kids in general. Mainly I’m wondering what kind of evolutionary pressure will be put onto the virus in a population where young children represent a larger and larger target for the virus as adults become vaccinated.

Not fear-mongering. It just seems like we still don’t have a good explanation of why kids have (mostly) been spared, and so we don’t seem to have a good explanation of why that would continue to be the case. Also, low risk != low risk, and in places like Brazil, there has been heartbreak with babies dying of Covid, etc.

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#738

Post by rahimnathwani » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

g3e0 wrote: post #720

neaanopri wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early on, I read that even though people who die of covid are typically old, they have plenty of time left. E.g. an 85 year old dies, who would be expected to live 10 more years.

Median age of COVID deaths here in the UK is 83[1]. Life expectancy is 81. 1: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...

Life expectancy for an 83 year old is 90 (male) or 91 (female):

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#739

Post by kwhitefoot » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

How is a non-vaccinated person supposed to be able to tell if the person breathing on them has been vaccinated?

Re: Vaccinated Americans now may go without masks in most places, the CDC said

#740

Post by DanBC » Fri, May 14, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #568

walrus01 wrote: post #434

I have a personal theory that humans do not fully understand death rate when it's spread out widely across many geographic areas. Let's say, for instance, that the covid19 death rate is about 450 people a day. It might be more or less than that right now, I haven't specifically checked (but I do recall that it's easily been 2000-3000 a day for some periods of time in very recent memory). But that might be 450 people…

> What changed? It's the same number of dead people, right? Aside from general aviation concerns, that 747-400 will have young families, infants and children on board, whereas exposing everyone on that 747-400 to COVID-19 would mostly result in the deaths of the elderly and the infirm. If we had an outbreak of Spanish flu with the same overall death rate it would not be as bad. It would be much worse. The deaths of t…

> I genuinely don't understand why everyone has insisted on talking about COVID-19 in terms of absolute deaths. For everything else like heart disease etc. we talk about statistically "losing X years of life".

We do this because people misunderstand the "losing x years of life" statistics...

> The median age of death for COVID-19 has been at or above the statistical life expectancy.

...just like you've done here.

https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75

> Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (11.6 and 9.4 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and > Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data (including LTC type, severity, and potential confounders such as socioeconomic-deprivation and care-home status) is needed to optimise YLL estimates for specific populations, and to understand the global burden of COVID-19, and guide policy-making and interventions.